Thanks for this! I’ve been meaning to start getting into learning more about systemd and making services, this is super detailed and gives me a pretty good starting point!
Did you happen to see which subdirectory was using up this much space? I don’t think I’ve ever seen .cache go above 10GB, so this may be a bug in a piece of software you use.
Looks like yay is storing every previous binary for AUR bin packages (also excuse the unreadable terminal theme, it doesn’t play very well with a lot of TUI apps unless they support custom theming)
You should run yay -Sc from time to time. This cleans a) your pacman cache (which is normally done by executing pacman -Sc) b) your AUR build cache, which is what’s taking up 160GB. But this one seems rather unusual, I use paru (which also has the command paru -Sc), so I can’t really tell if this is normal with yay.
The command also asks you for every directory if you want to delete it or not, so it’s completely save to run that command.
Something I noticed was that it was mostly the binary packages that were taking up so much space, it may be because of how yay stores the programs (does it use git?), the ones that were compiled from source code usually took up the least amount of space, while the binary programs were the ones taking up tens of gigabytes
Indeed, yay utilizes the AUR, which essentially serves as a Git repository for each package. These repositories typically include a PKGBUILD file and a .SRCINFO file, along with possible additional files like patches, desktop, or service files.
For example, take a look at IntelliJ Ultimate: [aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/?h=intellij-i…]. It contains the .SRCINFO and PKGBUILD, as well as a .desktop file. These files themselves do not occupy much space.
The PKGBUILD specifies the sources for dependencies. For instance:
The PKGBUILD is essentially a Bash script with predefined functions and variables. You can learn more about it here: [wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD].
This script primarily downloads and extracts the tar file. In this specific case, it only relocates the files to their intended installation locations, like moving the desktop file to /usr/share/applications.
With such packages, there’s a possibility of wasting significant space since the tar file is downloaded and possibly retained in the cache.
However, other packages, especially those compiled from source, usually involve Git clones. These clones bring the Git repository into a subdirectory of the already cloned AUR package Git repo. Some might also have source tarballs. These types of packages generally do not consume much space in the cache, as they are often just text files, like C source code or Python scripts. These packages frequently rely on external libraries and packages, which are not included in this package’s cache.
While binary packages often bundle all necessary libraries and other components in their source tarballs.
The AUR cache is mostly beneficial if you’re rebuilding the same version or can reuse components from a previous version. For example, a package might depend on a large, static file that doesn’t change often.
In Paru, I’ve enabled the “CleanAfter” option to prevent my cache from overflowing. Given my relatively fast internet speed, redownloading large files isn’t a major concern for me.
You could have a cronjob run something like find /home/user/.cache -type f -atime +30 -delete, which would find files that haven’t been accessed in the last 30 days and delete them. Make sure your home partition is not mounted with the noatime option though.
They’re both good DEs with their pros and cons. I’m glad you found something you’re happy with! For me that’s Gnome but I’ve used Plasma 5 quite a bit two and it’s a close second for me. I don’t think there’s much use in bickering over which is “better”.
That’s why I’m calling it a playground fight. They’re both good, but right now I’m loving KDE. GNOME is really beautiful. I organized the taskbar in KDE to be similar to default GNOME, but with some extra stuff that I’m digging too.
For me: totally. I need to use windows for work. With WSL, I can use all the tools I need via the Debian box underneath. All I use windows for are the communication apps my colleagues use.
Might give it another go then, the problem for me is not that it doesn’t work, but that it doesn’t work reliably though
Have been using it as a PWA and half the time it forgets I gave it mic permissions or resets my audio settings/doesn’t even recognise my mic in the first place
I started using Plasma 5 a smidge before devs were saying it was ready for primetime. That was my conversion from Gnome (which I was very happy to leave by then) and it's been nothing but positive.
I will wait for the full release of Plasma 6, but I'm super excited for it. I still <3 Plasma 5.
Why is the unity is underrated when its what i use right now with Ubuntu Unity and its actually really great experience for my 2021 HP Stream 11 Laptop and i hope you all to share your experiences using the unity de in Debain Ubuntu Arch Fedora Gentoo Opensuse Etc thanks for your Amazing community my Wonderful Friends
A lot of people are saying its the best. Perhaps they are right. I don’t kmow. And I hear it all the time. “It’s the best! It’s the best!”. Who knows. But a lot of great people are saying it. Maybe the best people. That’s just what I hear.
Now that you mention it, Trump sounds a bit like the way FreeBSD people talk about Linux.
“When they send us Linux distributions, they are not sending their best. Linux is an unplanned, undocumented, unusable, crashy mess. Some, I assume, are also good distros.”
I still think KDE is a much smarter desktop environment and much more light or fast. I never liked GNOME 3 and Unity had many performance issues in the past. I also tried GNOME 3 recently and still, I needed many plugins to make it good and usable and was still lacking much stuff, while on KDE works all perfectly. I’m waiting for Plasma 6 now. :D
From a guy who processes thousands of devices in e-waate recycling, legit any refurb lenovo thinkpad/dell precision/hp elitebook laptop. People will stop using tech way before they should be stopped being practically used.
Imo i think thinkpads are better value(due to sheer volume in market) and they tend to have several options (normal laptop vs 2 in 1 vs slim laptop vs big screen vs one with a gpu in it)
Qt with C++ is a spectacular environment to develop UI apps in. Coupled with QtQuick it’s even better. It’s perhaps only outclassed by Flutter. As others have mentioned, there’s lots of inertia behind GTK+. There’s also past issues with licensing which made the OSS community prefer GTK+ to Qt.
I’ve no idea what’s involved in using Qt in Rust but people starting new UI apps in C and GTK+ today are likely doing a disservice to themselves and the larger OSS community that could contribute to development and maintenance.
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